Sierra Leone notes continued

Thursday

This afternoon, Moustapha came to pick me up. I was glad to get out of such isolation, the wind and the rain falling on my lonely little house eventually got the better of me. We drove along the foot of forested hills and across small rivers with grand names like Macdonald Brige, and Moustapha explained how the British had named everything, even this road, which to me was not much of what I would call a ‘road’. The Penninsular Road, he said.

With the coast to our right, the mountains to our left and the tumbling rivers falling away below us, it was a ripe moment for feeling that all was right with the world. Moustapha put a CD into the car radio and started to sing along passionately to Enrique Iglesias’ ‘Hero’, his gravelly voice scratching through the octaves as I hummed alongside.



Just before we arrived in Freetown, we stopped at a village to buy charcoal for Moustapha’s family. Freestanding on the road’s verge were sacks of the stuff, topped off with palm leaves to protect them from the rain. A muscular man came out to greet us, his wife staying on the porch of the house, cobbled together with wood and metal strips, gathering long green cassava leaves into bundles.

As Moustapha and the father went about the business of arguing over the price, grandmother brought out a little girl to greet me. When the girl saw what it was granny wanted her to do, say hello to a scary white thing, she started bawling, streams of tears pouring down her face as she dug her heels into the red rocky earth and screamed even louder. I beckoned, in as friendly a manner as I could, for her to come over but she cried even more, and before long the whole family- aside the mother who was still bundling up leaves- had come to watch the hilarious spectacle of the poor little girl being dragged towards something really frightening.

Eventually I gave up and we got back in the car. Granny asked if I didn’t have something for the little girl and Moustapha said in his usual abrupt way that I could give 2,000 leones if I had it. I handed over a brown damp note and the little girl steeled herself to take it from me. Everyone clapped, and we drove away.

“She no see white man before,” said Moustapha, happy with his three bags of coal. “She think you monster.” We drove on.